Manufacturers use welding robots to quickly produce large quantities of products, reducing welders’ workloads and improving safety and the working environment.. However, air quality during welding work has become a more significant issue. Fume extraction is crucial for robot welding processes, even if workers don’t seem directly exposed to harmful fumes. Yet, the industry has not fully embraced this consideration.
Especially for MIG/MAG welding, the welding process generates a large amount of fumes in the welding cell, which must be sucked out. Stationary fume suction devices normally extract the welding fumes, but they often fail to consider the safety and health of workers involved in maintenance or other tasks near the welding cell. If you leave the welding robot cell or curtain open, the welding fumes escape into the surrounding air, and nearby workers unintentionally absorb them.

In 2018, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced that welding fumes are carcinogenic. As a result, it has become common knowledge that companies must ensure clean air on manufacturing sites through appropriate dust collection technology for occupational health and safety. You can use the xFUME® ROBO suction kit with either a mobile fume suction device or a central system.This kit directly suctions fumes from the source, preventing their spread in industrial robot and collaborative robot welding cells.

According to several scientific studies, suctioning welding fumes at the source, directly from the welding process, is the most efficient means of collection. Depending on the welding position, this suction system can filter out more than 95% of all dust particles (>0.1μm) as welding fumes.

Mechanism for sucking fumes from the fume source during robot welding